Gayle Skidmore

When: Tue., March 21, 7 p.m. 2017

thehighnotecafe.com

Like Amsterdam, the city she now calls home, award-winning singer-songwriter Gayle Skidmore has "purged some of the ghosts of her past." In doing so, Skidmore embarked on a personal journey, which she chronicles in her upcoming full-length album The Golden West (self-released; April 7, 2017), a story written in perfect little pop chapters.

Whether it's a song slowly built on soft tinkling piano and airy choruses or tracks rife with busy banjo and handclaps, chunking guitar and urgent drum beats, Skidmore's dreamy voice glides through tales of how letting go and letting up on the pressure she put on herself allowed her to get to where she is.

Skidmore describes The Golden West as "whimsical, melancholic music for the romantic intellectual," an apt description made all the more so because it is her third release accompanied by an adult coloring book—each page a visual representation of a song on the album.

Those who forget the past may be condemned to repeat it. For Skidmore, however, leaving it behind meant being able to move forward and share the bright light of The Golden West.